


fifty-five hundred years

by Yellow



Category: A Passage to India - E.M. Forster
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, Romantic Friendship, correspondence by letters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 09:59:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8886583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yellow/pseuds/Yellow
Summary: Aziz and Fielding watch India change in increments, and wait, wait, wait, until they can truly be friends.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [matchsticks_p (matchsticks)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/matchsticks/gifts).



> "And Aziz in an awful rage danced this way and that, not knowing what to do, and cried: 'Down with the English anyhow. That's certain. Clear out, you fellows, double quick, I say. We may hate one another, but we hate you most. If I don't make you go, Ahmed will, Karim will, if it's fifty-five hundred years we shall get rid of you, yes, we shall drive every blasted Englishman into the sea, and then '—he rode against him furiously— 'and then," he concluded, half kissing him, 'you and I shall be friends.'  
> 'Why can't we be friends now?' said the other, holding him affectionately. 'It's what I want. It's what you want.'  
> But the horses didn't want it— they swerved apart; the earth didn't want it, sending up rocks through which riders must pass single file; the temples, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the Guest House, that came into view as they issued from the gap and saw Mau beneath: they didn't want it, they said in their hundred voices, 'No, not yet,' and the sky said, 'No, not there.'"

                This time, Aziz read the letters.

                Fielding wrote him after returning to England, and Aziz was as surprised to receive the letter as Fielding seemed to be to have written it. Yet life changing events seldom pass without a lingering bond, and despite their disagreements Fielding thought fondly of Aziz, and sought to keep in contact, if only this once.

                Aziz’s boy brought him the letter. Despite the Rajah’s death he was never short of work and carried on with the Rajah’s son, still the Muslim curiosity. Aziz didn’t mind much, as he had long ago determined that it was not he but the Hindus who were the curiosity, and kept his children pious and devout. 

                Therefore, he had enough to hire a cook and an errand-boy. He wondered after his boy in Chandrapore, how old he would be now, then dropped the thought of Chandrapore entirely and opened the letter.

                Fielding wrote sparsely, with none of the flourish of Aziz’s poetry. It was almost charmingly English, as much as the English could be charming.

                He skimmed over the mentions of Stella, of course: he already generously decided to associate Ms. Quested with his beloved Mrs. Moore, and that was where he exhausted his patience with Englishwomen. Nevertheless, Aziz decided to be delighted at the letter Fielding sent him, their relationship as repaired as it could be after his visit. The new and uneasy distance between them was something Aziz was determined to ignore as long as it was convenient to do so. He was sorry for not reading the letters, and Fielding was no longer living in India. The distance gave him space to be wistful.

                Life in England seemed bland to Aziz, and dull: ordered farms and social affairs Fielding had never liked much in India, but seemed to be enjoying with Stella Moore at his side. Once or twice Aziz caught a longing for the disorder of India in his description of the dreary English countryside, and preened with pride. He carefully avoided thinking about Chandrapore and avoided thinking about the Fielding who had returned home and married an Englishwoman; instead, Aziz thought about the Fielding he regarded so dearly and transposed that man over his life in Mau.

                The letter ended quietly, with a fond farewell, and Aziz’s heart swelled with goodwill. He sat down to start a letter at once, and then was called to the new Rajah’s side. His letter sat dormant for weeks, beginning and ending with, “ _My dear Fielding.”_

                Aziz finished and sent it eventually, but he never truly expected a reply.

The years in India trickled by like dripping molasses, and Aziz thought less and less of those years in Chandrapore and the English altogether, though the scar of the trial persisted like a cracked lens across his vision of the English, India, all of it. He received and sent letters to Fielding despite it all, distinctly annoyed upon receipt and joyful in his reply. The correspondence marked the time, one or two letters a year, and they piled up in the drawer with the picture of his wife as his children grew.

                The growing independence movement largely passed Aziz by, though when asked he would wax at length about its necessity. When his wife and Jemila stopped buying salt, he learned it was at the insistence of Karim, following the salt marches in the south. His chest swelled with pride, and he mentioned it in his next letter to Fielding, crowing about his son Karim, who was carrying out what his father could not. It was times like these he missed afternoons drinking tea with Hamidullah and Mahmoud Ali, where he could talk at length with like-minded men. Fielding wrote back with a subtle questioning of how a salt boycott would change things; Aziz’s reply was the most fiercely political piece he’d ever written.

                Fielding surrendered in the next letter he wrote, but with a wry twist to his words. Aziz couldn’t tell if he was being mocked or not, and stewed in annoyance for months until he deigned to write another, safer letter about the oppressive heat. They carried on like that until Ahmed took to the streets with the Quit India movement and the gap between Fielding’s disapproving response and Aziz’s begrudging forgiveness stretched longer.

                Still, there was forgiveness. They could talk in the gaps between things not mentioned and retain some of the simple fondness they’d shared in Chandrapore. Once in a while, Fielding would remark on some small indignity of his buttoned-up life in England, and Aziz would laugh and feel a rush of warmth. He always expected too much; it couldn’t be helped. He still found love in the in-betweens.

 

                Two months after that hot August day India was freed, Aziz wrote a letter. He gloated and poetically recalled India’s past; he made no mention of the partition. Privately, he wondered what Mahmoud Ali and Hamidullah chose, whether they uprooted their lives to move to the new Muslim state or if they stayed in Chandrapore and took it back from the British, day by day. He turned his nose up at either choice, though he too could not decide between the dream of a Muslim state, the lost desire for one India, and the comfortable life he had made as a friendly Muslim to the Hindus of Mau. In the end, the inertia kept him in Mau. Ahmed left at once for Pakistan and promised to write. Aziz wept, but was fiercely proud. Karim and Jemila stayed in Mau, and Aziz consoled himself with two of his three children staying to care for him in his old age.

                Aziz ended the letter, “ _Karim did it, Ahmed did it, and now we are all free.”_

                The reply was short. “ _So you are.”_

                Aziz was ready to be angry, angry and proud, at this succinct dismissal of him and his people, but enclosed in the envelope was a postcard from Cairo. His breath caught.

                He ran to his desk and penned a reply.

                “ _Do not tease me like this, you arrogant man!”_ Aziz ran to his errand boy in an excited rage and bade him deliver the message.

                “ _I would not tease you quite so cruelly,_ ” came the reply. “ _I shall be in Mau in a week’s time._ ”

                Never be friends with the English! He had thought and thought this yet it was too easy to fall back in with Fielding’s acerbic wit. Aziz didn’t bother with a response, instead resolving to ignore Fielding entirely if he truly appeared in Mau.

                He still found himself at the train station on the day of Fielding’s arrival. It was a small, hot building. His leg shook as he waited and he wondered if this was one last chance for Fielding to laugh at him, call him an idealistic fool.

                Then a train pulled up to the station, and Aziz held his breath.

                Fielding stepped off the train, and he was older than Aziz remembered. He was softer, too, not just around his waist but in his face, his sharp jaw gentler with age. Aziz wondered if that was not the only thing that had changed, remembered his harsh words at their last meeting, scoffing at Indian independence, the letters that he had stuffed in a drawer for weeks before responding.

                And Aziz, for once, did not ask, because he truly feared he would be disappointed. For once, he did not want to know. It was enough that Fielding had come here to see him. It was enough that Karim had stopped them from buying salt since the marches and Ahmed had risen up in the streets. It was enough that there was a free India, in some form, even in pieces.

                Fielding simply held out his arms. Aziz walked forward and clasped his hands, then embraced him.

                Fielding seemed smaller than Aziz remembered him, shorter. Aziz imagined he still smelled like the sands of Cairo.

                Fielding murmured in his ear, “Can we at last be friends?”

                “We are old men now,” Aziz said, half laughing, half crying.

                Cyril held him tighter, and said, “That simply means we have waited long enough.”


End file.
